


Rumpelstiltskin.

by Basingstoke



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Character of Color, Episode: s01e12 Captain Jack Harkness, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-03
Updated: 2009-12-03
Packaged: 2017-10-04 03:39:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Basingstoke/pseuds/Basingstoke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Post "Captain Jack Harkness."</p>
    </blockquote>





	Rumpelstiltskin.

**Author's Note:**

> Post "Captain Jack Harkness."

The whisky Jack kept in his desk was smoky and very good. Tosh sat down across from Jack; he was quiet, far more melancholy than she ever remembered seeing him before. "So," Tosh said.

 

Jack held up three fingers. "If you start asking me all your questions, we'll never stop. So--three, okay?"

 

"Right."

 

He met her eyes. His were still rimmed in red, and there was no mockery on his face, nothing that said he was playing a game with her. He wasn't tormenting her, she realized, he was asking her to go easy on him.

 

Tosh sat back, sipped her whisky, and thought about it. Jack refilled them both once before she settled on three. "Where are you from?" she asked.

 

"A human colony about forty light years from Earth, about three thousand years in the future. Hot and dry. Not much like Cardiff."

 

"Oh." That really hadn't been the answer she was expecting. She drank the second whisky rather more quickly than she intended, and held out her glass again.

 

"Maybe some water," Jack said.

 

"No, I'm quite sure. God, Jack, we all thought you were CIA." Jack smiled as he poured her another drink. "Why are you here?"

 

"I'm looking for someone," Jack said. "He tends to hang around Earth, getting into trouble, so I figured I would do the same thing." He grinned. "No bigger trouble than Torchwood, right?"

 

"No. Do you always move heaven and earth for those you love? No-- don't answer that. That's not my third question," she said.

 

"Yes, I do," Jack answered anyway. "When I have a long enough lever and an immovable place to stand. What is your third question?"

 

Tosh took a deep breath, looking at his face. "What is your real name?"

 

"Captain Jack Harkness," he answered without a moment's hesitation. Tosh held his eyes; he leaned his head back on his chair and swirled his whisky in its glass. "You said real," he said. "It's my real name."

 

"Fine," Tosh said. She sat back in her chair.

 

"I'm really a captain, too. I was captain of a Chula warcraft."

 

"A spaceship?" she offered.

 

Jack snorted. "A spaceship, yeah, but there are different kinds, you know. It makes a difference whether you're captain of a battleship or a cruise liner. Mine was big and had guns."

 

"Of course," Tosh said. "I wouldn't expect any less from you."

 

His smile faded. He finished his drink and took the glass stopper from the decanter; he paused, turning the glass over and over in his hand. "I lost two years of my life," he said. "They told me I was in a coma, but..." He shook his head. "Things didn't add up. I had scars and didn't know where I got them. People I knew wouldn't look me in the eye. And given that I'd already done some really awful things, and that was just fine with them--" He shrugged.

 

"Oh," Tosh said.

 

"Call it a moment of clarity," Jack said. "I got the hell out of Dodge and found someone I would rather be. I've been using this name longer than my last one."

 

Tosh asked simply, "Was it Torchwood?"

 

"No. Different time, different war, different planet." Jack wriggled his eyebrows. "Used to that yet?"

 

"Not even remotely."

 

"I am human. Three thousand years isn't enough time to change."

 

Tosh shook her head. "My God, Jack! No wonder you said three questions only. I have so much I want to know--the technology, the history, what it's like--"

 

"There's a lot I can't tell you and a lot I don't know. A lot..." Jack looked away. "I love World War II. It's easy. Hitler is bad. England is good. France needs saving, Germany needs saving, and although it seems impossible, it can be *done.* Do you know how many times I've been through that war, how amazing it is that the right side keeps winning?" He looked at her, eyes blazing with life.

 

Tosh shook her head.

 

"I wanted to see why things happen in a certain order. Why it happens the way it does. I know there's an answer. I know the name of the answer--" Jack broke off in a tiny laugh. "No, I just know his title."

 

The Doctor. She knew, but she didn't know if he knew she knew. "Can all your people travel in time?"

 

"Can all your people drop a nuclear bomb?"

 

"Right."

 

Jack grimaced and said, "I don't mean that lightly. My entire family is dead, Tosh, and my colony, everyone in it. Me and six other kids my age joined the army before the place was flattened. In my time, the--the other side--when I was a kid, I thought they started it. That they destroyed one of our colonies out of greed, by surprise, out of nowhere. Then I joined up, worked my way into intel, and found out that they ambushed us because one of the people in that colony was going to grow up to be our own personal monster. In an alternate time line he killed eight million people. Brutally. So a small cadre went back in time and bombed his colony; they misjudged the time, they meant to land just after the fighting broke out, and instead they started a different war and nearly a billion people have died. It's beyond comprehension!" Jack caught his breath and sat back in his chair. "That's what it's like in the future," he said, softly. He pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead.

 

"Jack." He closed his eyes. Tosh leaned across the desk, hands planted firmly on the smooth wood, and kissed him. "Maybe it won't happen," she said.

 

"I was always bad at causation in school," Jack said, and Tosh thought that sounded like agreement. "Anyway, that's just my horrible little corner of the galaxy. There are beautiful things out there," he said, and smiled with one corner of his mouth.

 

Tosh thought of young, hopeful women singing in the dark. "We've seen a few."

 

"Not nearly enough. I wish I still had my ship; I'd really show you something then." He grinned wider, leaned up, and kissed her in return.

 

"Goodnight," Tosh said.

 

"Don't dwell on this too much. I'm exactly who you think I am," Jack said.

 

"Just from Mars, not Peoria, right."

 

"You never thought I was from Peoria." Jack wrinkled his nose.

 

Tosh raised her eyebrows.

 

"New York at least," Jack protested.

 

"*Goodnight,* Jack," Tosh said.

 

"Los Angeles!"

 

She shut the door after herself. She paused at her desk, for a long moment, thinking of Weevils and songs and battles in space.

 

She glanced back into Jack's office on her way out. He was leaning over the coral on his desk, both hands curved around its blunt spines, whispering to it, just as she had seen a hundred times before. This time, though, slow tears tracked down his cheeks.

 

"Goodnight, Jack," she murmured again.

The End.


End file.
